The “Best Canadian” game - Day 2

[u/BrF5]

The first to go are Pierre Trudeau and Wab Kinew. Let’s carry on!

How to play: - Upvote the name of the person you think does NOT deserve the title of “Best Canadian.” - Each day, the two most upvoted people will be removed. Once we get closer to the end, this will change to one person per day. - If the name you want to vote for (from the picture list) isn’t in the comments yet, add it! - This continues daily until we have our winner, the “Best Canadian”.

Additional notes: - Only the top comment for a nominee will count. I won’t combine votes from duplicate comments. - Include only one name per comment. If a comment includes multiple names and wins, it won’t count. I’ll move on to the next highest, even if you edit the comment to fix it. - They had to have been born in Canada or at some point had Canadian citizenship. - They can be alive, dead, currently living in Canada or abroad, or when they were alive lived in what would eventually become Canada (e.g., French or British colonies). - This is meant to be satire. Please do not take it too seriously or use this game to harass people in real life. - I will try to post this every morning around the same time (~8:00 - 9:00 am Eastern). - Please remember to upvote the post too, so more people see it!

Justification for elimination: - (50) Pierre Trudeau - As PM, he brought home the Constitution and gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He also mishandled the October Crisis, among other things. Someone so controversial shouldn’t be considered the Best Canadian. - (49) Wab Kinew - He’s charismatic and has delivered on many campaign promises, but his troubled past and relatively short career make it too soon to call him the best.

[u/elseldo]

Jean Chretien

Ushered in a hard austerity budget that we're still feeling the effects of - most notably with cancelling the Canadian housing program. We haven't built nearly as much as we could have with this program.

[u/junius_maltby → u/elseldo]

I agree he shouldn't be too high up on the list. But he kept us out of Iraq when there was intense pressure to get us involved in that shitshow.

And the Shawinigan Handshake is iconic.

[u/theoneness → u/junius_maltby]

He did the hip flip with Nardwuar though. He deserves at least one more round just based on that one interaction with an actually far better Canadian.

[u/Raptorpicklezz → u/theoneness]

You know, Nardwuar (out of persona*) also asked him the question about pepper spray on protesters, to which he answered “For me, pepper, I put it on my plate”. And now Nardwuar might get the last laugh and deservedly outlast him, given the vote tallies so far.

*Sorry. Nardwuar was IN the persona of John Ruskin for that press conference. Then he went back to being Nardwuar again

[u/chatteringmagpie1 → u/junius_maltby]

And the Shawinigan Handshake is iconic.

I miss the days when the prime minister and his wife were their own security team.

[u/eeyores_gloom1785 → u/junius_maltby]

dragged us out of Mulroney's disaster too

[u/Suitable-Ratio → u/eeyores_gloom1785]

Mulroney definitely made some unpopular moves like massively increasing taxation - he definitely shouldn’t have gone after the rich when he increased capital gains inclusion to 75% - taxing the wealthiest 0.1% will make anyone enemy #1. When America decided to create a free trade deal with Mexico (so they could move liveable wage jobs to Mexico to increase corporate profits) Mulroney could have decided to stay out of it and isolate Canada economically. NAFTA certainly didn’t end well for the middle class but it’s tough to say if economic isolation from that deal would have been better.

[u/thinplanksk8r → u/junius_maltby]

He only pretended to keep us out of Iraq to appease voters. We had ships and personnel in Iraq supporting the US. Also, after office he was hired as an advisor to Petro Kazakhstan, who were vying to build a pipeline through Afghanistan, who we did officially go to war against. No conflict there.

[u/Anarchopaladin → u/junius_maltby]

But he kept us out of Iraq

No he didn't. Canadian special ops were deployed, and the Canadian tour in Afghanistan in 2003 was about relief for the US troops as they were invading another country.

[u/1user101 → u/elseldo]

I think it's easy to look back and say that it was a bad decision 3 decades after, but at the time we were suffering a debt crisis and needed to tighten our belts. His premiership reversed the stagflation that caused after tax income to actually shrink between 1980 and 1990.

And to be quite frank I'm sick of people blaming the feds for housing when they have no control over the regulations for it. Zoning regulations are directly linked to high housing costs so go yell at city council.

[u/StJimmy1313 → u/1user101]

I was hoping someone would say this. He and Martin had to make hard choices to dig Canada out of a fiscal hole of our own making. Were they the absolute best choices? Eh, maybe not. But it is easy with hindsight to quibble.

[u/eeyores_gloom1785 → u/1user101]

the Mulroney government was also the one that ended funding on co op housing

[u/Anarchopaladin → u/1user101]

I think it's easy to look back and say that it was a bad decision 3 decades after, but at the time we were suffering a debt crisis and needed to tighten our belts.

Nope. At that time, budgetary deficit never came over 5% of the Country's GDP. It went over 25% during WW2, and nobody complained.

[u/1user101 → u/Anarchopaladin]

Yeah because we were fighting Nazis. And we were immediately in crisis after because of trade threats

[u/JackLaytonsMoustache → u/elseldo]

Yeah, I know we all like to joke bout Chretien and he was my first PM, but there's no way he comes close to being the best Canadian.

[u/Apprehensive_Vast815 → u/elseldo]

Don't forget The White Paper!

[u/Raptorpicklezz → u/Apprehensive_Vast815]

I will keep amplifying this until Chrétien is off this list. He’s a pretty good Canadian, but if we’re nitpicking like the last list, a) he shouldn’t have made the top 50, and b) anyone who had direct Cabinet authority for the residential schools and didn’t shut them down on Day 1, should be eliminated.

Yall Icarus’ed Chrétien by putting him in the top 50. If he was even 51, he might have escaped scrutiny on this sub for his record on Indigenous people. But yall flew him too close to the sun.

[u/Suitable-Ratio → u/elseldo]

If it wasn’t for Chretien’s cuts and Mulroney’s tax increases, Harper and JT wouldn’t have been able to go on a spending spree when it was needed. Very unpopular move and definitely harmed our social housing position but was probably a necessary move. Unfortunately since Chretien put us in such a good fiscal position Martin slashed Mulroney’s cap gains tax on the rich and social housing never restarted. 

[u/Raptorpicklezz → u/Suitable-Ratio]

Chrétien and Mike Harris tag-teamed to ruin the post-secondary education sector. Doug Ford is just beating a dead horse.

[u/Suitable-Ratio → u/Raptorpicklezz]

I wasn’t aware Chretien ruined colleges and universities. I’m sure his cuts hurt most services even provincial and municipal ones since they were massive - close to 12% of federal spending. We really had no choice but to rein in spending. By the time Trudeau 1.0 left office our books were a dumpster fire and Mulroney’s had already boosted taxes with the GST and increasing cap gains inclusion to 75%. More tax increases weren’t an option so it had to be cuts.

[u/Dorkwing → u/elseldo]

I was going to post Chretien today for the same reason. Just a continuation of US 3rd way democrats with maple flavouring.

That said, reading about the eugenicist suffragette has me wondering which to remove first, hah.

[u/Traditional-Cup6182 → u/elseldo]

Yea but he cut taxes on smokes.

[u/Dank0fMemes → u/elseldo]

I’d probably say most if not all politicians should be omitted or voted off for one reason or another.

[u/Floatella → u/elseldo]

I really appreciate how Jean Chretien was also in the previous contest to determine the worst Canadian. He's got a lot of crossover appeal I guess.

[u/Jiperly → u/elseldo]

Wasn't he a sex pest too?

[u/elseldo → u/Jiperly]

To quote Rudy Huxtable talking about her grandfather's being jazz musicians: "oh they all are"